An Instant in the Wind Read online

  “I’ll be all right,” she assures him urgently. “The sooner we start the sooner we’ll be there.” She begins to tie up her bundle. “How far away do you think it is?”

  “It's difficult to judge on these plains. We may reach it before sunset.”

  The dog lies licking its wounded paws. He has eaten most of what remained of the snake.

  “Come on,” she says.

  “We must take it slowly,” he warns her. “You are worn out, and we have nothing left.”

  “There will be enough to eat and drink over there.”

  And she laughs, with a sob of joy in her throat. Just to reach water again, to dive into it, immerse oneself completely, to wash herself quite clean and feel her body cool and wet, to drink as much as she can hold. To live.

  Every now and then he has to hold her back when she hurries on ahead of him. It is a long way to go, and the heat is overwhelming. They must save their energy; she doesn’t realize how taxing it is.

  Her only response is to point ahead: there, there, don’t you see? What does it matter if we arrive exhausted? We can stay there for as long as we wish, until we have recovered completely. And from now on everything will be so much easier, you’ll see. The turning point is behind us. We have survived: you have helped me to survive.

  He is the first to surmise the truth, but he cannot bear to warn her. Through the perspiration clinging to his burning eyelids he sees the lake shimmer and tremble, the green trees sway, the people moving among the huts. Why hadn’t he suspected it before they set out? But one doesn’t want to. Perhaps one needs these small explosions of faith to keep one going.

  He sees her walking a few yards in front of him, drawing on her last energy to stride on with her thin legs. He can hear her pant for breath. He wants to call out to her, but his voice is a hoarse whisper in his throat. The dog follows them at an erratic pace, running from one shriveled bush to the next to rest its paws in the meager shade of twigs as dry as porcupine quills, before risking it out in the sun again.

  He feels like crying. He wants to curse. For the first time since they are together he feels his insides contract in real despair.

  It is very late in the afternoon when she finally stops, her body heaving, covered with sweat and dirt.

  “Is it—very far still?” she asks. It sounds as if her voice is torn, bleeding, from her throat.

  He turns away from her.

  “What's the matter, Adam?” she asks. “I’m asking you: is it still far to go?”

  “We’ll never get there,” he says, unable to look at her.

  “Of course we will. Why shouldn’t we?”

  “It doesn’t exist.”

  She raises a thin arm to point; then allows it to drop back to her panting side.

  “But it's impossible, Adam!”

  “No, it isn’t. It really is a mirage.”

  “If one has no choice but to die,” she says, her voice strained, “why can’t it be violently like that poor baboon in the mountains? Why must it be like this?”

  “We’re not going to die,” he tries to comfort her.

  “I don’t want to go on living. I’m too tired. I just don’t want to any more.”

  “This morning you didn’t want to either. But you went on after all.”

  “Because we saw the lake. Because, suddenly, there was something to believe in, to keep me going.” She sits down on the burning ground.

  “There's a hill over there,” he says. “Let's go there, it will be easier to stay there overnight.”

  “No, I want to stay right here,” she says stubbornly.

  He takes her hand to help her to her feet, but she angrily shakes him off, bursting into sobs. It is almost impossible to cry, her chest and throat are too dry, she has no tears; but huddled in a small heap she sits sobbing, her whole body shaking.

  “It's not so far,” he pleads.

  “Why don’t you go?” she pants. “Go back to the Cape. Tell them…” She says no more. Even her crying subsides.

  He unpacks all her belongings, but there is nothing to offer her, not a leaf or a shriveled root to chew, nothing. He feels tempted to sit down beside her, to lie down with her and not to stir again: not even to cover them with the kaross, but to remain exposed to the cold of the night and to tomorrow's sun. But the very urgency of the temptation makes him resist. Planting the sticks in small mounds of stone he stretches the kaross over them; then makes a fire and sits down beside it, watching the world grow dark. Opposite him, the dog lies panting. She doesn’t stir.

  In the distance jackals start yelping and laughing. If there are jackals, he thinks wearily, there must be something somewhere. Hares, buck, a gnu. The moon rises. Clenching his teeth, aching, he gets up. His body is contorted with cramps, his chest aflame.

  He covers her with the second kaross.

  “Stay here,” he says. “I’ll try to find us something to eat.”

  “There's nothing.”

  “I’ll find something. I promise.”

  She shakes her head.

  “I’ll leave the dog with you,” he says. “And the assegai. I don’t know for how long I’ll be away. Perhaps until tomorrow, perhaps the day after. But I’ll come back. Do you hear me, Elisabeth? I’ll come back with something to eat.”

  “Don’t go,” she whispers.

  “I must. It's our last hope.”

  Kneeling beside her, he tucks the kaross in under her, kissing her. There is moisture on her lips; it is like dry pods grazing against each other.

  She follows him with her eyes, trying to remember what he said, struggling to unravel her thoughts. Is he going to the Cape? Give my love to my parents. Tell them. Are there people and water nearby? A river in flood. No, the ox has been swept away; it was I who forced it to plunge in. Mind the stones. You can’t kill that little buck, it saw me bathing in the stream, it's trusting us, it has come to us for shelter. It's snowing outside, can you feel how cold it is?

  What is the dog doing here? Isn’t he dead then? I thought a snake had bitten it. An old Hottentot woman sucked out the poison, but she died, too, and was buried in a porcupine hole. Wearing my dress. She had the temerity to pry in my things and steal the dress, not even knowing how to wear it properly, her old dry dugs hanging out. The young girls have long moist love-lips protruding from their slits, she showed it to me, very proud of herself. Nobody is ashamed here, one only needs cover against the vultures. Sooner or later they’ll dig him out under the stones. If only one could be pure, bare as a skeleton, like a rock stripped of barnacles. A yellow lantern swinging through my days: we change three times every day, bring me some water. Will you listen to me? I’m used to being obeyed. Never trust a slave, my child. You think a slave is nothing but a woman and a woman no more than a slave. I wish to inform you: I intend to get married. It is not a descent into hell, only the interior. We’ll draw our own map as we go on. Sehen sie mal, all I do is to copy that map, over and over. Aber nehmen Sie sich in Acht, the people here are afraid of their own country. Somewhere in a bush a stranger will pick up one of them, blown away by the wind.

  They come streaming past you like the wind, it's obvious they don’t see anything, their eyes gazing straight ahead: they still believe in a heaven. Look, I’m not afraid. I’m only tired. And he can go on without me: I don’t know where he’ll go, but he’ll be all right, round and round, like on an island.

  She must have dozed, for when she opens her eyes again the moon has moved to the far side of the shelter. The jackals are still cavorting in the dark, but very far off. She can no longer see the dog. Those poor children who died in the ruin. Was it really the work of Bushmen? But why destroy a whole household for the sake of a few head of cattle? It doesn’t make sense.

  Here I am. Destroy me too. Send another herd of buck to trample me into the dust. Lay out my children with me, all those tiny skeletons. One is born with so much suffering: one is so indestructible.

  Painfully she sits up to look at the day break
ing. Adam is still gone. The day the river carried away the ox, she thinks, she wanted to jump into the flood too, convinced that she couldn’t bear any more. How ridiculous! Today, surely, she has reason to destroy herself, yet she makes no move to do anything about it. How is it possible that, with every step into despair, one also acquires more resistance to the one thing which may end it all?

  I am tired. I am tired. I do not want to go on, yet I do. How can I allow him to wander through the night, and perhaps for days on end, in search of food for me, if he comes back to find me dead? You hold me back, not I.

  How much more reason did you have for suicide the day your master ordered you to flog your own mother? But you didn’t. Day after day you stared at that great free mountain across the sea, yet you did not go mad or destroy yourself. All those months you endured it on the island.

  Escaping from the island on the flimsy raft that night: the sound of water trickling from my paddles. It is not the crashing of the waves I remember first, nor the splintering of the wood, but that sound of oars in water—the firsthand most intimate, sound of freedom. It was the same that day in front of the Castle. What I recall above all is not the irons or the cat o’ nine tails, nor being exposed to all those jeering people, but the screeching of the gulls above me, and their movement in the wind. Even now, whenever my thoughts carry me away from the thirstland through which we’re trekking, it's gulls I hear; and as I sink into sleep at night, I hear the water trickling from the oars.

  This time there was no water, only a mirage. Will she survive? She seems to have lost all will. I’ll have to find something for her, more than just a snake or a tortoise or a wild melon. Would it have been easier if one could pray for help? But to whom? Allah of my grandmother Seli, or my mother's Heitsi-Eibib, or God or Jesus Christ? Names, names. I have to find my way among the meager things themselves: stone and indestructible roots, earth, plain, koppie, star or moon.

  With dogged determination he follows the sound of the jackals. Alone, in the cool of the moonlit night, he can progress swiftly. It is almost exhilarating—but tempered by pain—to be so utterly alone in space, as if the world has grown more limitless in the dark, more absolute, the black shadows of stones or shrubs as real as the things themselves. At the same time it is less crude than in the daytime. Not tender, but more approachable, no longer hostile.

  It is impossible to make out whether it is the jackals coming and going around him, or whether the sound itself is deceptive on the open plain. Whatever it is, he seems to be moving in circles in search of it, and it is nearly daybreak before he begins to close in on them. The whole search, he realizes, may prove as much of a delusion as the mirage: the sound of the jackals need not mean anything. It may be nothing but cavorting, or fighting, or mating, not a hunt at all. He is prepared for it. But when they become visible in the first light he discovers, with a shock of elation, that his pursuit has not been in vain: three or four jackals have cornered a blesbuck doe against the stone wall of a koppie. She is trying to shield a newborn fawn against their onslaught. They must have found her at a very early stage, for even the afterbirth is still untouched.

  At his approach the jackals give way, growling, whining, cowardly threatening, still hovering as close as they can; but when the sun comes out they skulk away. The doe stands eyeing him, sniffing suspiciously. Every time the fawn tries to stagger past her on its long shaky stalks of legs, she hurriedly nudges it back. At the slightest move Adam makes she lowers her long curved horns, whistling a warning through her nose. She is obviously worn out by the birth and the long night's vigilance, but he knows she can still escape with ease. As she is too large for the pistol, he takes an arrow from his quiver, presses it against the string of his bow and lets fly. It hits her in the shoulder. With an anxious bleat she jumps up and begins to canter off, but within a few yards she stops again and returns to her lamb. Giving furious jerky kicks with her hind leg she finally manages to dislodge the arrow. The smallest scratch is sufficient, Adam knows; the poison is in her. But it may last many hours to take effect, and he lacks a Bushman's energy for stalking her should she run away. Even if she manages to take the fawn with her they can cover a great distance before sunset.

  But suddenly he discovers that he is no longer alone. With an excited bark the lean dog comes flashing past him, amazingly agile in spite of its worn-out condition. Immediately the doe lowers her head again, swinging the deadly horns in his direction. The dog is nearly impaled on them. Whimpering, he jumps aside, but a moment later he comes rushing back.

  Now Adam can use the pistol, aiming at the same shoulder, to cripple her. She stumbles and falls, but rises again, panting. But the brief lapse was time enough for the dog to dart past her and grab the fawn by the throat. A single jerk suffices.

  The doe sinks to her knees again. She must be finished off quickly. Adam doesn’t want to waste any more ammunition: there is so little left. And they’ve already got the fawn. But he wants more than just that. While the dog continues to worry the doe, Adam slips round behind her, grabbing her neck, knife in hand, aiming for the jugular vein.

  In a sudden, final, sweeping movement of her long neck one of the fierce horns slashes his arm from wrist to elbow. For a moment he loses his grip. Then the dog grabs her by the nose. That is the end.

  Panting, Adam remains on the ground beside the dead doe, his head reeling from exhaustion and loss of blood. The night has been too much for his weakened body. After a long time, groping blindly, he manages to roll the doe over and finds the small swollen udder. Grasping a teat, he milks a thin jet of lukewarm liquid into his parched, gaping mouth, drinking and swallowing painfully but unrestrainedly. At last he pauses for a while, trembling; then forces himself to stand up and fetch his skin-bag to empty the doe's small dugs in it.

  His arm is still bleeding badly. Spiderwebs. Fortunately, at this early hour, they are easy to find, sparkling with dewdrops in the dry bushes. He covers the wound with the webs and bandages it with a length of skin ripped from his apron.

  Feeling giddy, he first has to rest again. After a while blood begins to ooze through the sides of the skin bandage, but at last it stops. The arm is still throbbing, but he cannot waste any more time. Fumbling with his left hand, he manages to slit open the fawn's belly and tear out the guts. He also rips out the doe's stomach and painstakingly retrieves the fluid from it. After reflection he cuts the hindquarters from the carcass as well: more than that he cannot manage. Lying down to recover again, he allows the dog to gorge himself on what remains of the doe. There won’t be much for him later.

  The sun is high by the time he gets up again. It will be hellish to travel in this heat but he cannot wait any longer. Far above he notices the vultures circling, his heart throbbing with sudden fright. Is it already too late? Urging on his body relentlessly he begins to trot in the direction of the birds.

  She is startled by the vultures. Has something happened to him? But soon she realizes that it is round her own small shelter they’re circling. Why did it never happen on other days? How can they foresee anything so uncannily? She has no choice but to crawl from under the spread kaross to shout and wave at them before they move away, fading into distant specks, without, however, disappearing entirely.

  She lies down once more. Her head feels dizzy. From time to time, as she lies there, everything gets black before her. Painfully she tries to gather saliva in her mouth for swallowing, but it stays dry; her throat is swollen so badly that she can hardly breathe.

  It's no use. He’ll be too late. I used to be so unyielding, she thinks with wry dejection: I refused to be at anyone's disposal, to become a mere possession like a cow or a wagon or a barrel. Now death is beginning to possess me, without asking my leave. And I cannot resist any longer. For his sake I would like to, but it is no longer possible.

  When his shadow falls across her she mistakes it for one of the vultures. She tries to move her lips and chase him away, but can no longer make a sound.

  “E
lisabeth,” he says.

  Since when do such things speak?

  “I’ve brought you food,” he says, sitting down beside her. She can hear him pant and gasp for breath. She smells his sweat. “Meat and milk,” he says, raising the skin-bag to her mouth. It is lukewarm and sourish from the long day's sun. She finds it hard to swallow. He coaxes her, feeding her with infinite patience, like a baby. After a while she opens her eyes.

  She looks up. But there is nothing. God is the emptiness of an endless sky.

  The similarity of nature patterns: the shape of a snowflake—the vertebrae of a rocky hill—erosion ditches—a fern frond—the skeleton of a reptile.

  It is another lease of life, more decisive than before. They can continue, even though it is in pain. He never complains, but she can see that his wound is worrying him. It has festered; he can barely use his arm. They talk very little. Even that has become an effort.

  Something has happened: they have lost the Cape, like something dropped on the way. Neither of them has any expectation left; no hope of ever arriving on a ridge and seeing something different from what they’ve seen so far. The horizon has taken over.

  What remains, is walking itself, pure aimless motion: the swaying of bony legs, the rowing of emaciated arms, the plodding of aching feet swathed in heavy skins, breathing, perspiration forming patterns on the crust of filth covering their skins; the lame dog hobbling behind.

  There was a time when you accused me of being too white for the truth. Look at me now. I am black and burnt. And is this truth, then?—this unending suffering, struggling simply to keep moving through space and not to lie down again?

  If one of us should give up now, the other would no longer be able to continue.

  Increasing listlessness. And a strange sense of amazement about silence and space. In this infinity everything happens for the first time. Our rare words are, every time, the first words. Every daybreak is the first appearance of white light on the empty world. Here is a grain of dust: everything is birth.